


When She Came Back

by SmallestGrackle



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heartbreak, Loss, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5438777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmallestGrackle/pseuds/SmallestGrackle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nora has managed to make it back from the Institute in one piece, but her heart is in pieces.</p><p>[A very brief little ficlet where I explored Nora's (Sole Survivor default name in-game) initial reaction to her experiences in the Institute and the realizations she had there.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	When She Came Back

**Author's Note:**

> -Though a pairing is gently hinted at, it isn't focused on in this small glimpse.  
> -Please do not read this if you have not completed the quest, "Institutionalized" in Fallout 4!! Major spoilers.  
> -This is written with Nora having joined the Minutemen and built her chief settlement in Sanctuary. She refused the Institute's invitation to join them.  
> -I am writing a book, if anyone is interested: <http://smallestgrackle.tumblr.com/post/149302058094/ill-be-posting-my-book-under-read-mores-over>

* * *

When she came back, her ears were ringing. Hands swept in from all around, gentle as they held her under the arms, steady against her back when she couldn’t stand. There was dust in her eyes, in her mouth, and the air was too thick to breathe, teeming with power. The shriek of the beam emitter died above and left her deafened and in many hands, shaking in a pile.

She heard herself speak, far away. “I’m alright. I’m alright.” Overhead, there was a crack as a series of circuits blew, and she tucked her head into the dusty fabric of someone’s arm to avoid the falling embers.

When she came back, everything had changed. The knots in her stomach had become a hole. What was lost had died away without a chance, without a sound. The taken would never be found.

When the patience of Preston’s voice dropped into her head, she didn’t know how to answer. “What happened?”

Slowly, she stood and they all backed away, giving her room, save the one. It was Hancock who stayed at her arm, letting her lean. She blinked slow at him, wordless.

“Does anything hurt?” Curie, bless her, she had come with water, and Nora drained the mug in urgent pulls, shuddering. “Nick,” Curie urged, “can you go to ze house, please, and put on some light for us?” It was night still, late and chilling, very nearly dawn. Somewhere, a brahmin brayed. Sanctuary.

“For a minute, we thought…” Sturges’s arms were covered in black smudges, his hair mussed and wild. “We worried you might not make it back. This thing was going haywire when you zapped in, it was…it was really somethin’.”

Their faces seemed to lean in closer, blurring as their voices flickered in and out. “I’m alright,” Nora said again when Curie brushed a lock of frazzled hair from her forehead, but then she was shaking her head sharply, eyes shutting tight as the tears welled within them.

“Space,” she heard Hancock grunt. “Give some.”

They did, and as she was shuffled gradually toward the house, Nora tried to tell them, tried to explain. “It isn’t what we thought,” she sputtered, over and over. Her resolve was brittle and bare, worn from questions, wrecked with the lies. “It isn’t what we thought.”

But then her breath hitched, her heart racing and much too loud, and the world tilted and was tumbling down. Hancock’s grip on her shoulders saved her knees from the hard ground, but as he sank along with her, her nerve was gone, capsized in heartache, and the sobs came unending.

The last fragment of her life before, the last of _her_ , had been gone before she ever left the vault.


End file.
